But mostly this post is about luring you in with “George R.R. Martin” in the title and then telling you about other things. (Maybe all of my informational posts will from now on include his name in the subject line…)

Like, Green Mountains Review, the latest issue of which has, in addition to great poetry and prose generally, a lot of translations in it. I can’t guarantee that all of it has a speculative element, although at least one is a fairy tale, but is having a dragon plopped down in the middle of your narrative all that important? Isn’t it more about the story? Hmmm? Anyway, here’s the translation section. Those who argue about the need for lit mags, many of which are supported by universities, should think about how such funding can be a potent source of fund for translations…

–Aandaal—“Tiruppavai” translated by Ravi Shankar
–Eugene Dubnov—“Winds of Estonia” and “Sparse Snow Upon the Beach,” translated by John Heath-Stubbs and Anne Stevenson, with the author
–Daniil Kharms—“A Fairytale,” translated by Katie Farris.
–Vladimir Mayakovsky—“They Don’t Understand a Thing,” translated by by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky
–Simona Popescu—excerpt from “Night and Day,” translated by Adam Sorkin and Claudia Serea

Meanwhile, Tin House, which always has a great mix of fiction and nonfiction, has its summer reading issue out and on newsstands now. They were the ones who put out the Fantastical Women issue I blogged about back in 2007.

I also picked up the 27th issue of the intriguing Salt Hill, a literary journal with excellent fiction this time around by Brian Evenson and “On Voyage,” a series of excellent short-shorts by the 2010 Calvino Prize winner Sharon White. This is some stunningly awesome surrealist/fantastical stuff by White–you gotta check it out. Not to mention great poetry in translation by Raul Zurita. You can order the mag right off of their website, too. Do it now.

Not to mention, the latest issue of my favorite mag I can’t read, Tahtivaeltaja, is now out, featuring Nalo Hopkinson.

What does any of this have to do with The Delighted States, the book? Not sure, except I’m reading it right now and it is indeed putting me in a delighted state, along with the Martin and the lit mags mentioned above. Maybe it’s all connected because all of it gives pleasure. Isn’t that a good enough connection? I think so.

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Comments

I picked up the recent Slice (really good Lev Grossman interview) and Paris Review (great interviews with both Samuel Delany and William Gibson). I hadn’t heard of the Green Mountains Review or Salt Hill, though a quick virtual flip through the Salt Hill preview looked very nice.

Wow, incredible blog format! How long have you been running a blog for? you make blogging look easy. The entire glance of your site is excellent, let alone the content!

About Jeff VanderMeer

Photo by Kyle Cassidy

Jeff VanderMeer has been named the 2016-2017 Trias Writer-in-Residence for Hobart-William Smith College. His most recent fiction is the NYT-bestselling Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance) from FSG, which won the Shirley Jackson Award. The trilogy also prompted the New Yorker to call the author “the weird Thoreau” and has been acquired by publishers in 28 other countries, with Paramount Pictures acquiring the movie rights. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Atlantic.com, Vulture, Esquire.com, and the Los Angeles Times. He has taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, and serves as the co-director of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp . His forthcoming novel from Farrar, Straus and Giroux is titled Borne. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his wife, the noted editor Ann VanderMeer. You can contact him at pressinfo at vandermeercreative.com. (Author photo by Kyle Cassidy.) More...